ABC's Election Analyst blogs on the wonderful world of Australian Elections.

April 05, 2012

Final Queensland Election Figures and new Brisbane City Council Election Site

Updating of the ABC's Queensland election results site has been turned off. The site currently contains estimated 2CP counts for most seats as the ECQ abandoned conducting notional preference counts after election night.

In the state's closest contest, Bulimba, the ECQ continued with notional preference counts. However, it has been a week since any new Bulimba preference counts have been released, so the ABC site has been switched to estimating preferences.

The ABC's election computer estimates the LNP will win Bulimba by 48 votes. The scrutineers of both parties put the LNP victory margin at 85 votes. To date the ECQ has not released any preference counts, so we will still wait for any official figures.

What is clear is that the LNP has won 78 seats, the Labor Party seven, Katter's Australian Party two with two Independents. With Anna Bligh having resigned from Parliament, Labor has only six seats pending the South Brisbane by-election.

The ABC's site will be updated with final figures once all the official distributions of preferences are released. This will be done in the week beginning on 16 April.

Local government elections will be held across Queensland the same day, though coverage of these elections will not be provided on the ABC site. Visit the Electoral Commission Queensland's website at http://www.ecq.qld.gov.au/ for all information on the local government elections.

Full coverage of the Brisbane City Council elections and the South Brisbane by-election will be provided at http://www.abc.net.au/elections on the night of Saturday 28 April.

The ABC has a focus on Brisbane simply because it is the only local council openly contested by political parties, which means our election publishing system can add value to the coverage provided by the ECQ.

Antony, can you explain why ecq have not declared certain seats with a clear majority and if they are not "declared" does that technically mean those seats currently have no representation? Also, if not declared, who is getting paid to represent that electorate?

COMMENT: The ECQ uses rules set out in the Electoral Act. Payment of members is as set out in the relevant Acts. Without devoting considerable time and effort to impenetrable tracts of legislation, I can't provide a precise answer to your question.

However, the general principle is that once a member is declared elected, their date of election is deemed to be the date of the election and they are paid accordingly. This means that members elected unopposed are treated as elected on the day of close of nominations.

I presume this principle applies in Queensland as it does in other Parliaments.

Antony, as a long time yet silent admirer of your work, thank you very much for your invaluable explanations of the results in Queensland as they have become available. Your regular updates have been in clear contrast to the results provided by the ECQ and other media in Queensland.

On that point, do you believe there are questions to be asked of the ECQ in terms of the speed with which they were able to provide accurate results in this election, or have we simply become far to used to prompt and regularly updated results provided by the AEC and other such organisations in recent years?

Even now, on Friday night, the ECQ site is showing the ALP as being ahead in Bulimba, when even the local TV stations are reporting it is an LNP win, notably some 48 hours after you did.

COMMENT: The ECQ is battling with an old computer system that doesn't allow them to do some of the 2CP updating that the AEC does. It does not have permanent staff and returning officers like the AEC. It has also found its permanent and experienced staff badly stretched by the parallel running of the local government elections. I don't know what has been wrong with the reporting of the Bulimba count, but that doesn't mean there is something wrong with the count itself.

I'll have a talk to them about their reporting methods after this run of elections is over. There's no point picking a fight on the issue at the moment.